Electronic Mail Guidelines

Email has become one of the most used communications tools in both offices and classrooms. As it becomes a part of all classrooms as well as office areas, the following points are important to keep in mind:

The software and hardware that provides us email capabilities has been publicly funded. For that reason, it should not be considered a private, personal form of communication. Although we do not have staff who actively monitor email communications, the contents of any communication of this type would be governed by the Open Records Act. We would have to abide and cooperate with any legal request for access to email contents by the proper authorities.

Since email access is provided as a normal operating tool for any employee who requires it to perform their job, individual staff email addresses must be shared with interested parents and community members who request to communicate with staff in this fashion. Each campus and department should post a list of email addresses for their staff through their Internet pages.

Staff should be expected to return email communications to parents or other public members who have a legitimate business request within 24 hours whenever possible. Requests from outside agencies for information do not fit into this same category and can be handled with a different timeline or in a manner consistent with previous experience in working with similar requests. Staff should not participate in email surveys without district authorization.

Requests for personal information on students or staff members should not be honored via email. It is critical for a personal contact to be made with any individual requesting personal information. This relates particularly to any requests for student grades, discipline, attendance or related information. In addition, security information such as username or password should not be sent via email for any reason.

Since email access is provided for school business related use, please do not forward messages that have no educational or professional value. An example would be any number of messages that show a cute text pattern or follow a “chain letter” concept. These messages should be deleted and the sender notified that messages of that nature are not appropriate to receive on your district email account.

Please use the “groups” function of our email system appropriately. Do not send messages to an entire staff when only a small group of people actually needs to receive the message.

Attachments to email messages should include only data files. At no time should program files (typically labeled “.exe”) be attached due to software licensing requirements. In addition, there exists the real possibility that any program files received as attachments over the Internet may include viruses or other very destructive capabilities once they’re “launched” or started. If you receive an attachment like this, please delete the email message immediately without saving or looking at the attachment.

Subscriptions to Internet listservs should be limited to professional digests due to the amount of email traffic generated by general subscriptions. Please use your personal Internet account to receive listserv subscriptions of a general nature, if one is available.

Students will not be issued individual email accounts. For any projects that involve email communications, use either your district account as a facilitator to the activity, or, work with your technology contact to activate a special project account for a limited time.